Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my Tour de France 2005 list.
Posted on 07/10/2005 10:11:24 PM PDT by nutmeg
Stage 9 showed that Lance Armstrong and the Discovery boys know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em.
On Sunday's 107-mile route that was the Tour's toughest test yet due to six substantial climbs, Armstrong's Discovery Channel team made a show of force by setting the tempo at the front of the peloton. Discovery's collective effort lasted for the entire race and it let Armstrong's rivals know that Discovery's failure to protect Armstrong on Saturday was a mere hiccup, a pause for the pull of the starting cord before the Discovery machine started humming smoothly in the mountains.
While Jan Ullrich and his hot pink T-Mobile train followed along calmly in Discovery's slipstream, Discovery allowed CSC's Jens Voigt slip up the road in a breakaway and take back enough time to snatch Armstrong's yellow jersey.
Voigt's move was exactly what Discovery has been waiting for since Armstrong took the race lead after Discovery's victory in the team time trial on Stage 4. Armstrong knew that if he chose to defend the yellow jersey so early in the race it would unduly tax the teammates he would need to set the tempo and cover attacks when the Tour hit the mountains.
Armstrong wanted to yield the yellow jersey, but only to a rider who he knew didn't have the legs to be a real podium threat. It took longer than Discovery would have liked, but when the right combination of riders went off the front in a breakaway Discovery got what it wanted...
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.foxsports.com ...
ping!
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my Tour de France 2005 list.
I said yesterday that Lance was being way too honest in his assessment of his team after T-Mobile seemingly trounced Team Disco.
It was a trap. The team got to rest for a day, Lance defended the challenges, and now will have basically two days to rest prior to the mountains.
I can't wait for Tuesday.
This eased my mind a bit...Lance probably has things well in hand. He's The Master, not I...I defer to excellence!
prisoner6
Same here! ;o)
Second, here's a quote from Voight on the upcoming high mountain stages (courtesy of velonews.com):
On the chance of passing the jersey to Ivan Basso on Courchevel: "It would be ideal if that happens. I'm just not made for the high mountains, but I'm not complaining. You can't have it all. At CSC, we are all riding for Ivan Basso. We are going to protect him."
Smart move by Disco. Make CSC work to defend and seize the opportunities. Voight is no threat. LA just needs to deal with the real GC riders. Should be a lot of fun!
ping
Armstrong's vigorous legal response to SCA mirrors his approach to others who have questioned his success. Dr. Prentice Steffen has said he was fired by the U.S. Postal Service cycling team in 1997 because he refused to prescribe illicit substances. Armstrong joined the team soon after Steffen's dismissal. Since then, Steffen has occasionally voiced his belief -- based on conversations with former Armstrong teammates, he said in an interview this week -- that Armstrong uses banned drugs. Steffen said Armstrong had called and threatened legal action after Steffen made his opinion public in 2001.
Story 'is fiction'
"I believe the whole Armstrong persona is fiction," said Steffen, now the physician for a Denver-based cycling team and assistant director for the department of emergency medicine at St. Mary's Medical Center in San Francisco. "I don't think he's a nice guy, and I don't think he ever was. I don't think the cancer changed him. It's a nice story, but it's fiction. It's marketing." More...
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